Hollywood High School keeps its doors open 12 months a year to ease overcrowding. The year-round schedule allows the campus to run hundreds more students through its cramped classrooms. It also chips away at their education. Teachers skip pages of material, assign less homework and give fewer tests because their school year has been slashed by 17 days. Hundreds of pupils take the Stanford 9 exam shortly after returning from an eight-week vacation.

Imagine a system that determines where a person is placed based on skin color or gang ties or territorial lines. Sound like what happens in the state prison system? It also happens in the high schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District. When the Los Angeles school system's busing czar tries to find space for kids crowded out of their neighborhood high schools, he must consider more than bus routes and classroom seats.

Countering a blistering study last fall that attacked the performance of minority high schools in four Southern California counties, including Los Angeles, a group of California education professors said Wednesday that minority pupils have made academic gains, particularly since a series of school reforms were initiated.

When Sylvia Rousseau began visiting Locke High School this fall, she found students running through hallways during class and playing hooky in the middle of the day. She found teachers griping about incessant noise and fights. Rousseau, the "local superintendent" in charge of schools in much of South Los Angeles, hoped that the atmosphere would improve at the campus near Watts.

The Los Angeles school district has identified sites for 15 new high schools and officials say they are confident they have secured the land for more than half of them. After months of quiet efforts to nail down land for badly needed new high schools, negotiators for the Los Angeles Unified School District are closing in on two deals that may be announced as early as next week, officials said Friday.

In a program conceived as a national model, the U.S. Department of Defense will announce today a new $5-million program to retrain laid-off scientists and engineers for teaching careers in Los Angeles' inner-city high schools. The first 20 "teaching fellows" will be selected in the coming months and by summer should begin their studies--a specially tailored combination of classwork out of Cal State Long Beach and hands-on experience with mentor teachers in Los Angeles Unified School District.

A robber armed with an assault weapon stole $7,000 from the student store at James Monroe High School in Sepulveda on Monday, but was captured an hour later when he returned in the guise of a student to retrieve the loot he had left stashed on campus, authorities said. School police officials said Kenny Anderson, 19, returned to Monroe to recover the cash hidden in his car, which he was forced to leave behind locked gates in the school's parking lot.

More than half the high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District are doing worse than similar schools across the state at preparing their students for college, but others--including four of the district's six magnet high schools--are performing far above their counterparts in other cities.

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday narrowly approved the distribution of condoms on high school campuses, but gave parents the option of denying their children permission to obtain them. The action brings to an end more than two years of study and often-rancorous debate over the proposal. Drawing cheers and jeers from more than 200 parents, activists and religious leaders who packed its meeting room, the board members adopted the measure by a 4-3 vote.

Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights has been ordered closed on Monday and Palisades Charter High School will remain shut down, possibly through Tuesday, while workers continue to remove cancer-causing asbestos from both campuses, Los Angeles school district officials announced Saturday.

The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Tuesday to the $50-million sale of a Department of Water and Power office building to the Los Angeles Unified School District to use as a high school. The terms and conditions of the sale include an option for DWP to lease back much of the building for up to 20 years to continue operating a water-testing laboratory and telephone call center.

The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Tuesday to the $50-million sale of a Department of Water and Power office building in Sun Valley to the Los Angeles Unified School District to use as a high school. The council adopted an ordinance setting the terms and conditions of the sale, including an option for the DWP to lease back much of the building for up to 20 years to continue operating a water-testing laboratory and telephone call center from the site.

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday cleared the way for the school district to convert its huge downtown headquarters into a 2,200-seat high school within four years. The board agreed to buy a 29-story office building on South Beaudry Street for its new headquarters, half a mile from the current home on Grand Avenue. In a press release, the district said it paid $74.5 million for the building, but did not disclose other costs.

Before the TV game show "The Weakest Link" came along, the City Section already had its version. It's called the City Invitational baseball tournament. That's where 16 teams, most of them mediocre at best, are given a chance to play for a diluted championship at Dodger Stadium. They are granted, despite their shortcomings during the regular season, the chance to reap the same ultimate reward as the 16 teams in the Championship bracket.

Twenty-four students from eight Los Angeles high schools affected by the 1992 riots were awarded higher education scholarships totaling $100,000 from the Shell Oil Co. on Wednesday. The high schools are Crenshaw, Dorsey, Fremont, Jefferson, Jordan, Locke, Manual Arts and Washington Prep. Most of the recipients already have been accepted to colleges and universities, including Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Spelman College, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside and UCLA.

San Fernando Valley schools took three of the top four honors at the Department of Water and Power's Science Bowl competition Saturday in Los Angeles. Although reigning champion Venice High School retained first place in this year's competition, Van Nuys, Francis Polytechnic and North Hollywood high schools took second to fourth place, respectively, against 26 Los Angeles-area schools.

We interrupt this rerun to bring you some new developments in the Crenshaw-Manual Arts basketball rivalry of 1988, already two games old heading into Saturday night's game at the Sports Arena to decide Southern California's Division I representative in the State basketball final: --A roller-coast ride, thrilling to the end, before a crowd of only 7,254, about 5,000 fewer than when the teams played for the City 4-A title last Friday. --A game built on improbability and emotion as much as talent.

Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer is exploring a deal to buy the downtown headquarters of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and turn it into a school that could relieve overcrowding in the Belmont area. The chamber building would be combined with a district property across the street to create a campus that could serve up to 1,500 students. If the deal goes through and the site clears environmental reviews, the school could open as early as next September, one district official said.

Hollywood High School keeps its doors open 12 months a year to ease overcrowding. The year-round schedule allows the campus to run hundreds more students through its cramped classrooms. It also chips away at their education. Teachers skip pages of material, assign less homework and give fewer tests because their school year has been slashed by 17 days. Hundreds of pupils take the Stanford 9 exam shortly after returning from an eight-week vacation.